The world says the past is the past; let it go. But what if the world is wrong? What if our history stays with us. What if patterns repeat over and over and over again. What if the pain we feel, the emotions that haunt us, and the things we fear don’t just come from us individually? What if they come from a deep, dark past that we may never fully understand? These are the questions we seek to answer about ourselves, and this is the path to healing.

Mark Wolynn tells us, “When family members lead unhappy lives or suffer an extremely difficult fate, it’s often easier to reject them than to feel the pain of loving them.” And he adds, “What I failed to realize is that when we try to resist feeling something painful, we often protract the very pain we’re trying to avoid.”

In this case, I think Mark Wolynn means that humans push away their past. They reject the reality of their history, and they fail to tell themselves the truth about their experiences. This will carry forward into the next generation. Humans don’t want to feel pain so they do anything in their power to avoid it.

Gabor Maté reminds us that in a desperate attempt to have a second of relief, we push away anything that is meaningful and true, and we do anything we can to escape our reality. And if you dare to be so bold as to ask questions about the past, if you challenge the status quo, you might find yourself facing an entire generation of those who built their lives on the foundation of escaping the truth rather than seeking to understand it.

What does healing mean? Healing means to seek the truth and integrate it into our lives. But what is truth? Are we suffering from a psychological disease? A disease of the mind? If we are in pain, did it start with us? Am I wrong for feeling like there has been pain long before I was born. What if I don’t believe that the answer is to just try and be normal? What if I don’t want to just fit in? What if what’s normal is actually broken, and what if what has kept things in order is actually chaos?

We must seek the truth. These questions are daring. They are courageous. Because in order to ask these questions you might have to break free of everything the world, your family, and generations past have told you to think and feel.

The past is not just the past. The past is so much more than that. It is everything. It’s who and what we are. If we don’t learn from, if we don’t understand it, it will consume us. And if we are to break free we must be the one who is bold enough to acknowledge what others refuse to see. If we are to break free we must go to places no one wants to go. We must seek to understand the things that they refuse to understand. If we are to break free we must have courage, we must have the willingness to take steps into the unknown.

This is truly how we heal.